In interviews with the Washington Post, multiple farmers expressed their dismay with the loss of farm workers under Donald Trump's harsh immigration policies and his administration's waffling on subsidies.
In a deep dive focusing on one farmer who voted for Trump, 36-year-old J.J. Ficke of Kirk, Colorado, the Washington Post is reporting that he along with other farmers are facing possible ruination now that the round-up of immigrants have begun in earnest and promised helpis uncertain.
"The federal government had promised JJ a $200,000 grant, spread across two years, to cover the cost of a seasonal farmhand from Latin America. In a place where local, legal help was nearly impossible to keep<' the Post is reporting before adding, "But then Trump, in the earliest days of his second term, threatened to break tens of thousands of those deals, suspending billions in agricultural funding and decimating the staffs that managed it. Swept up in the freeze was JJ and the $50 million grant program he’d signed up for along with 140 other farmers across the country."
Now those farmers, many of whom supported the president, are being left to scramble for workers of which there are few to chose from and worried about the future.
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Noting, "JJ had joined 81 percent of Yuma County’s voters in supporting Trump, whom he considered the better of two bad options," the report added, "JJ’s grant was frozen in late January as top administrators considered whether to cancel it. Over the next two months, more than 20 farmers requested $4 million owed to them, according to documents reviewed by The Post. None were paid."
That, in turn, has other farmers in the same boat and lamenting they can't depend on American citizens for manpower,
“I’ve employed Americans, and they quit after a few days,” lamented Wisconsin Tracy Vinz, “They quit after a few hours.”
Georgia produce farmer Mitch Lawson claimed he "lost nearly two dozen American employees before he qualified for $200,000," with Lawson stating, "I’ve had a couple who didn’t even last a whole day."
The report goes on to note that the inability to get workers is not the only thing plaguing the Ficke farm.
"One night, in their kitchen, Kassidee [Ficke] prepared a meat loaf as she considered the relentless uncertainty their family navigated. How would the couple, who had no health insurance, pay for their daughter’s care if the administration and Congress gutted Medicaid?" the Post is reporting. "JJ never stopped accounting for the farming costs that would not quit climbing and the eastern Colorado drought that would not end. And now came the tariffs that could spike the price of equipment and the attacks on subsidies that protect commodity farmers when markets collapse."
You can read more here.